Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Amazon has unveiled its long-rumoured smartphone with free, unlimited photo storage, jumping into a crowded field dominated by Apple and Samsung. Named Fire, the phone has multiple cameras on the front.

Amazon's first-ever smartphone has Gorilla Glass 3 protection with a rubber frame, and its buttons are made of aluminium.

The new smartphone has a 4.7-inch LCD HD display that has 3D capabilities. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos says images are typically flat, and Amazon wants to change that. You can rotate the phone around and get a different view depending on your angle of vision. He says the phone is basically redrawing the image 60 times per second. Bezos calls this "dynamic perspective."

The phone is smaller than leading Android phones, but larger than Apple's iPhone. CEO Jeff Bezos calls the screen, measuring 4.7 inches diagonally, ideal for one-handed use. The phone has a circular polariser that lets users look at it even outside at any angle, says Amazon.

The Amazon Fire has a glass back - something which we have already seen on the iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, and Nexus 4.

Under the hood is a 2.2GHz quad-core processor with Adreno 330 graphics. The phone has 2GB of RAM, which has become a standard feature in high-end phones.

The Fire phone comes with a 13 megapixel rear camera with Optical Image Stabilisation to counteract shaking as people take shots. Amazon is offering unlimited free storage on its Cloud Drive service.

The phone has a dedicated camera shutter button to launch the camera app - the Sony Xperia Z2 also has a similar button. In fact, we have seen it on many phones in the past. It features dual-stereo speakers with Dolby Digital Plus.

Amazon says the phone will come with a pair of earphones that features a tangle-free design with flat cables and magnetic earbuds.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos demonstrated a new technology - Firefly - at the launch event. It recognises over a hundred million items including email addresses, books, movies, song, and URLs. Snap a photo of a book title, and it'll show you where to buy it. Listen to a song playing in the background, and it'll direct you to that tune on Amazon.

Firefly can even direct you to knowledge: Snap a shot of a painting, and it'll pull up a Wikipedia entry on it.

The new Firefly feature also lets you snap bar codes, phone numbers and more. Like the camera app, there is a dedicated physical button for Firefly too.

The Amazon Fire Phone will bring features found in other Amazon devices, such as X-Ray for supplemental content and Mayday for live tech support. There's also access to e-books to borrow for members of Amazon's $99-a-year Prime program.

The phone has an auto-scroll feature, so you can tilt the phone to let the text scroll. It's similar to a feature found in Samsung's Galaxy phones.

The phone will start at $199.99 for a 32-gigabyte storage version with a two-year contract on AT&T.